Timothy Spangler: Koreans look for unity through commerce

The Kaesong Industrial Complex, located just north of the demilitarized zone that separates North Korea from South Korea, may soon be re-opened. Senior government officials in both countries agreed this week to sit down again and attempt to resolve at least some of their differences. Previous discussions broke down last month due to disputes over protocol. The complex was abruptly closed in April after animosity between the two countries reached worrying proportions.

More than 100 factories, owned and operated by South Korean firms, are located at Kaesong. Approximately 50,000 local North Korean workers provide the human capital, together with about 1,000 South Koreans who cross the border each day, to manage and oversee the work.

The North Korean leadership in Pyongyang did not react well to United Nations sanctions that were imposed earlier this year in the wake of the nuclear test that inflamed diplomatic tensions around the world. The leadership shut down the complex, removing its citizens and preventing any South Koreans from reaching their factories.

Kaesong plays both a symbolic and an incredibly practical role in the precarious relations between the two halves of this narrow peninsula. On the one hand, it provides an invaluable opportunity for the people of these countries to interact together and pursue similar goals, creating some sort of foundation for working together in the years to come. On the other hand, the complex provides Pyongyang with much needed hard currency, which has the effect of quite possibly prolonging the regime's time in power, rather than shortening it.

Of course, the hope is that the regular exposure of North Koreans to South Koreans, and specifically their way of life and of doing business, including the pecuniary benefits that derive from capitalistic success, will entice Pyongyang to reconsider its ideological opposition to free enterprise, as well as to freedom itself.

Reunification is the ultimate goal of many South Koreans, although it remains to be seen how long, and on what terms, it will take for a single Korea to arise out of several decades of division and dispute. Tellingly, the South Korean leadership in Seoul operates its official government relationship with Pyongyang by way of the Ministry of Unification, just so its intentions are as unambiguous as possible. Unfortunately, the tenor of relations has significant soured over the last several years, with a number of other joint projects collapsed due to disagreements of various types.

As a result, Kaesong's closure has been both an economic and a political problem. The complex was the engine for approximate $2 billion in trade, and a number of South Korean companies relied on it for the production of the electronics, clothing and other goods that were to be sold domestically and internationally. Perhaps more importantly, though, the complex represented the most reliable way for Kim Jong Un and his colleagues in Pyongyang to obtain the hard currency that they and their impoverished country need to survive under increasingly dire conditions.

However, the political ramifications of Kaesong's ultimate success or failure are far greater. If unification ever occurs, most likely upon the eventual collapse of the current regime in Pyongyang, then it will be essential to effectively integrate millions of North Koreans into modern life. This will not be a simple task.

The disparities between these two countries are far greater than those between East Germany and West Germany in 1989, when their reunification occurred after four decades of separation. As pernicious as the communist regime was under the Stasi, East Germans were not reduced to eating dirt and tree bark under their particularly Teutonic version of Stalinism.

The challenge facing Seoul is, therefore, much larger and will likely take far longer to resolve. Kaesong provides an invaluable opportunity to begin learning how to reintegrate these two populations into a single functioning country.

Some will argue that instead of engaging Pyongyang and striving to increase interactions with North Koreans, Seoul should do all that it can to isolate its neighbor and drive it as quickly as possible toward its ultimate collapse. Unfortunately, no one can guarantee when such collapse would occur, whether it is inevitable given the current power structure in North Korea and what level of casualties and suffering will result should it occur after a period of unbroached isolation.

At present, there are few convincing indications that the power of Kim Jong Un and his military elite is waning. This is, for better or worse, the circumstances within which Kaesong must operate. Its benefits are meted out in a broader context of despotic governance and widespread suffering.

In many ways, though, this makes this industrial complex all the more valuable to Koreans on both side of the demilitarized zone.